Cluster-Seminar Public Finances and Living Conditions

Does increased legal infrastructure lead to higher intimate partner violence (IPV) reporting and empower victims to leave abusive relationships? Structural barriers often prevent IPV victims from seeking help, with two-thirds of female victims in Europe neither reporting incidents to the police nor accessing support services. I study the rollout of women’s shelters and the introduction of the 2002 Violence Protection Act in Germany, which established a structured cooperation framework between shelters, courts, and police. I leverage variation in the rollout of shelters and the introduction of the reform to identify its effects, using newly digitized data on shelter opening dates combined with administrative county-level data.